Islanders to play flag football for Team USA

The Nantucket Flag Football League is going international. Three members of the island’s recreational league have been selected to play for Team USA in an upcoming World Cup tournament.

Brian Glowacki, Tris Gauvin and Nic Torres will travel to Panama City, Panama at the end of the month to play offensive and defensive line for the Flagmag.com National Team.

All three play for the Cardinal Construction all-star flag football team that is traveling to the FlagMag National Tournament this weekend in Las Vegas, Nev. The island team is ranked 12th in the league and third in the B division among teams from around the world. The three players inquired about Team USA after Cardinal Construction’s two tournaments in Boston earlier this winter. Team officials had been looking to add strength to the lines.

“I am expecting a whole different perspective. It is a different approach. We will be playing teams from America I am sure, but we will also be playing Team Guatemala, Team Mexico. It is going be real interesting to see their take on American football,” Torres said.

“It is a good opportunity to meet new people and play with different talent,” Gauvin said. “It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity right now.”

“My challenge is I have to figure out which language people speak in order to talk trash,” Glowacki said.

Glowacki and Torres played on the line for the Nantucket Flag Football Champion Ryan Conway Landscaping team, while Gauvin played all over the field for the runner-up Cardinal Construction squad.

Flag football at the next level is different than the game played on Nantucket Sundays during the fall. While the rules are essentially the same, the Nantucket game is much more physical as opposed to the tactical and precise game at the national level.

“They play civilized flag football. We play tackle football in which flags happen to exist,” Torres said.

But the gritty, physical nature of the Nantucket game will come into play when the three linemen travel to Panama.

“It has been the strong point in our league. Our line play is the most physical and it is the strongest point of our Cardinal team,” Glowacki said.

The Cardinal Construction team headed to Vegas this weekend asked for support from local businesses and the community to cover the cost of the trip. Glowacki, Gauvin and Torres are hoping to do the same for Panama.

“I know it seems like a silly game of touch football but once it gets to this level it becomes something you have to put something into. You get out of it what you put into it. Without those guys and without all the people that have donated and sponsored, there would be none of this,” Glowacki said. “We wouldn’t be able to do this without the support of our community.”

The island’s flag football league has seen a recent resurgence in participation over the last two years, and even more interest this year as the season has been extended to include the tournaments in Boston and Las Vegas. Playing through the winter months has offered a great outlet for the island’s players.

“It gives you something to focus on. It keeps everything a little more relative. You train a little harder, you focus on your diet and you don’t sink into the January grays,” Torres said.

“I think it has been neglected and hopefully now that we have experienced other organizations playing that we can learn from them and make it a better league and get more people involved,” Gauvin said, suggesting the possibilities of co-ed and youth leagues.

“The whole goal for me in the beginning was to see what more competition is out there. We have seen what we can do in local flag football and I wanted to see what more competition was out there and how far we could take it as sort of a gauge to see how good we were for all of the trash we talk to each other,” Glowacki said.

For more information on supporting Nantucket’s Team USA players, e-mail Brian Glowacki at nantucketcardinals@yahoo.com.

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